Doctoral thesis: Successful leadership in the social sector leads the collective movement of emotions and ethical-economic sustainability
Laurea senior lecturer Anu Nordlund’s thesis was accepted at the University of Central Lancashire.
New research in Finland shows how a good social work leader ensures fluency in multi-professional work, leads the emotional atmosphere of the work community by building and maintaining trust, and manages practical work through shared leadership in an economically and ethically sustainable way.
Laurea University of Applied Sciences’ social work senior lecturer Anu Nordlund’s thesis “Social Work Leadership Narratives in Finland: Perceptions of Leadership and Management and the Implications for Social Work Education” was accepted at the University of Central Lancashire in England in July 2024.
The thesis presents three leadership roles as narratives: the roles of “caregiver”, “understander” and “designer”. The caregiver is a transformative and coaching leader who, in the spirit of servant leadership, monitors their subordinates’ professional development and well-being. “Understander” is a role which understands the whole clearly and, in the spirit of emotional management, the meaning of emotions for the work community. In particular, the understander restores psychodynamic understanding to management and sees emotions as broader chains rather than individual events, the effects of which extend widely to the community as both positive and negative emotional effects. Alongside positive thinking, a critical attitude and acceptance of negative emotions is also realism for the understander. The designer’s strengths are the structural planning and implementation of multi-professional work, understanding and building the organisation, and strategy work in line with the core task.
In addition to the roles, the results show leadership as a reflexive understanding, where the professional growth of the leader begins with an examination of the self through the examination of the motives of leadership and the use of power and grows to examine the relationship and interaction with subordinates and expands to include an understanding of the group and community. The essential thing in this growth process for a leader is to understand the dynamics between trust and mistrust and to know and cultivate dialogue in the community to move the atmosphere toward trust.
The social sector management curriculum presented as the final product of the dissertation recommends strengthening the social sector management education by pedagogical solutions, which help examine the dialogical skills that guide the leader’s growth path. Secondly, an efficient social sector leadership curriculum encourages learning of shared management and multi-professionalism, especially from the perspective of values and diversity. Thirdly, pedagogical solutions should help examine strategic management and financial awareness in parallel, while respecting the professional ethical values of the social sector.
At Laurea University of Applied Sciences, the findings support development of both social work leadership and interdisciplinary leadership education. The new pedagogical solutions will be piloted in both social work leadership training and interdisciplinary environment with bachelor students both from social services and economics/security management.